


Our Own Hands Against Our Hearts

by thelemonisinplay



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: 5+1 Things, Community: cabinpres_fic, F/M, Love Confessions, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-06
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 10:47:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/673542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelemonisinplay/pseuds/thelemonisinplay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt: Five times Carolyn meant to say "I love you" to Herc (but didn't) and one time she actually says it to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The title is definitely not stolen from a Shakespearean couple that remind me of Herc and Carolyn. That would be silly.
> 
> Can also be found here: http://cabinpres-fic.dreamwidth.org/6625.html?thread=11504865#cmt11504865

**one.**

The first time she’d thought it, they’d barely known each other two months. He’d called just after she’d got back from the St. Petersburg debacle to see if she was free for lunch the next day, and … well, she'd rather wanted to see somebody who wasn’t Gordon. So she left a note for the still-sleeping Arthur and drove up into Daventry to meet him.  
  
He was sat in the café already, and smiled (rather unnecessarily soppily, she thought) as she approached.  
  
“Hello, Carolyn,” he said, sipping at his drink and gesturing across the table to another full glass. “I ordered you pineapple juice, I hope that’s alright.”  
  
“ _Pineapple juice_? Who do you think I am, Arthur?”   
  
(She couldn’t quite help herself sometimes, with the bickering. It was the first thing that came to her head, the first words to slip out of her mouth – regardless of how it was actually rather sweet, really, that he liked Arthur well enough to pay attention to his drink of choice. Even if he did then use it as a means of annoying her.)  
  
“Of course not, Arthur’s much less difficult.” That smile was back again, with a look, something akin to affection. She hoped her face never looked like that. “How was St. Petersburg?”  
  
Something must have changed in her face – and he must have been paying awfully close attention, because he immediately reached out an arm and took her hand across the table. And (she hated herself for it, but it couldn’t be helped) she didn’t protest. She just sat for a moment, face closed off, trying to quell the memory of the childish terror on Arthur’s face.  
  
“There was a birdstrike,” she began, and his immediate reaction to that was to ask if everybody was alright – and, already full of emotion that wasn’t quite as locked away as she liked to keep it, the thought popped into her mind. _I love this man_. Not I  _could_  love this man, or even  _will_ ; both of which would have been bearable. But present tense. Because Gordon had tried to steal her aeroplane and was awful to Arthur and had insulted her pilots (something she’d been surprised to find bothered her). And  _this_  man liked Arthur and liked her pilots and even liked that she had an aeroplane.   
  
Perhaps if she’d been somebody else, if she’d been her son, she’d have come straight out with it then, no filter, no guards. But she wasn’t somebody else, and she certainly wasn’t Arthur. She needed her independence far more than she needed to inform the ridiculous man how she felt about him.   
  
Besides, she’d never hear the end of it from her pilots if they found out that she was  _in love_.


	2. Chapter 2

**two.**

It was, as usual, Carolyn who’d started it. Truth be told, she hadn’t stopped to think about it at all: the moment she’d spotted that revolting ornamental dog on his mantelpiece when he was making tea, she’d had to hide it. Mostly, she told herself, to rescue her poor eyes from having to look at the thing. And of course when its pointy ears poked at him from under the cushion when he sat down, all the better.  
  
And so when she got into bed several days later to find it filled for some reason with the fridge magnets Arthur liked to make sentences with, she realised that this had somehow become a war.  
  
Herc’s captain’s epaulettes found themselves lurking in a dusty corner of an unused spare bedroom. Carolyn’s tights were brought to her by a bemused Arthur, who’d seen them decorating the potted plants in the living room. The pair of them were constantly on their guard in case something should happen; yet both found certain possessions missing after each visit.  
  
Eventually, after Carolyn had discovered her favourite bra dangling from the kitchen light, she decided things had gone too far. Which is how she found herself ordering a large and delicious-looking steak on his behalf, and then sneaking it into his fridge one day.  
  
She’d hoped that would be the end of it all, that perhaps he’d feel so offended by the steak that he’d apologise for everything else and allow her to win by default. And for several weeks, it seemed that this was the case. Granted, the steak was never returned to her (for which she held rather a grudge, given that it had been rather expensive and he was a vegetarian and so couldn’t possibly have eaten it himself), but also nothing in her house was at all astray.  
  
But then one day Arthur had wanted to listen to the radio, because Hester Macauley was doing some interview or other and he was interested. Carolyn had initially tried to refuse to allow him to listen (that woman had been unbearably infuriating), but then Herc had suggested that the two of them take Snoopadoop for a walk. Taking this suggestion as another win for herself, she’d deigned to turn on the radio for Arthur, ignoring the odd smirk on Herc’s face as she went to do so.  
  
This smirk was instantly explained when, all of a sudden, the room was filled with the unbearable sound of someone singing Puccini. Hurriedly turning down the volume, she was just working on her most poisonous glare for the most awful pilot she knew, when Arthur spoke.  
  
“Wow, that sounds just like you, Herc!”  
  
And – well, it did.  
  
Hit with a sudden suspicion, she popped open the CD drive to be rewarded with a blissful silence and, sitting in the centre of the drive, one of those discs you buy blank.  
  
“Oh, I was just getting into that,” Herc said cheerfully.  
  
Carolyn did a rather excellent job of pretending she couldn’t hear him as she took out the disc to better read the ridiculously loopy handwriting on it:  _I knew you liked opera! x_  
  
In silence, determinedly keeping her face straight, she handed the disc back to Herc before turning to Arthur.   
  
“Herc and I are taking Snoopadoop out now, you can put that horrible woman on the radio.”  
  
And if she spent that walk desperately forcing her face not to soften into a revoltingly soppy sort of smile – well, nobody else would have put quite so much effort into irritating her.   
  
(And when he noticed the faltering of her glare and smiled and tried to take her hand, it was so easy to ignore how nice it felt, and push him away. Because he didn’t deserve any affection after being so insufferable.)


	3. Chapter 3

**three.**

It was late. Arthur had gone up to bed hours ago, and they’d stayed up watching awful television just in order to abuse it. But now Carolyn’s eyelids were beginning to close, her head falling slowly towards his shoulder, and she was making her way slowly into slumber.   
  
“Carolyn?”  
  
She let out a sort of sleepy mumble, a show of recognition, but also a sign that she was much too close to sleep to make any sort of recognisable speech. He smiled down at her fondly, taking in all the vulnerability of an almost-sleeping Carolyn, and quietly, into the overwhelming silence of the rural night, spoke.  
  
“I love you.”  
  
He felt her eyelashes tickle against his arm as she opened her eyes. He looked at her expectantly, but apparently she wasn’t awake enough to respond with anything other than a slight frown, and soon she was sleeping again.  
  
They awoke together, far earlier than they’d wanted, when Arthur burst into the living room with tea.  
  
“Morning Herc, morning Mum! I wish you’d told me you were sleeping down here, I’d have stayed too, I love sleeping on the sofa!”  
  
Carolyn sat up, leaving Herc’s side rather chilly. She took her tea with a “thank you, Arthur” and drank it in silence, staring at the wall and trying to calm her thoughts.  
  
He loved her.   
  
Or at least, she thought he did. She supposed that could have been a dream, she’s not entirely clear on when exactly she fell asleep. But then, even if he hadn’t said it, the way he was watching her right now suggested it was true anyway.  
  
She wasn’t sure why this was suddenly such an alarming thought: she’d been aware that she was in love with the man for months now (a fact she’d been alternately trying to express and disguise ever since), but … well, she supposed nobody had told her that since Gordon. At least, nobody except for Arthur, but she wasn’t entirely sure he counted. And honestly, she was fairly sure she hadn’t even heard it from Gordon since Arthur was tiny. 

And then another frustratingly charming pilot had come along, and for the first time in probably twenty-five years, someone had told her that they love her. And all of a sudden, the fear seeping through her began to make a whole lot of sense.  
  
She knew that Herc was nothing like Gordon. She knew that he adored Arthur and appreciated her and would never try to steal her aeroplane. But he was also a man of four marriages, a man who likely said those words rather too soon, and certainly a man who enjoyed weddings far more than he should. 

And yet, she loved him all the same. She certainly couldn’t deny that anymore, not after those smiles she'd caught on her face sometimes when she was alone. Part of her wanted to tell him, wanted all the months of locking the words inside her brain to be over, wanted to be free with her affection – and the other part absolutely did not want to tell him, wanted her to stop acting like a teenager in her first relationship, and very much thought that he didn’t deserve to hear it. Especially after sneaking the words on her when she was sleeping like the hero of some cliché love story.  
  
No, she decided, burying deeper any desire to talk to him about how she felt. She wasn't going to tell him now.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're unfamiliar with Much Ado (which is where I stole the title from), it might help to know that Beatrice and Benedick are the secondary couple who spend the play bickering to cover up their love for each other. The main couple are Hero and Claudio, who are the typical love-at-first-sight slightly less interesting relationship.

**four.**

It was a rather quiet afternoon, all things considered.   
  
Carolyn and Herc had come down to London for the day, in order to see  _Much Ado About Nothing_  at the Globe before about two weeks of non-stop flying jobs for them both.  
  
(Obviously, Herc had tried to push for opera, which Carolyn had immediately shot down. She suspected his refusal to see  _Macbeth_  had been some sort of act of punishment for the character flaw of disliking his favourite form of storytelling.)  
  
They’d eventually decided on the matinee showing of the play, allowing them the rest of the afternoon to wander around London and pretend not to be sightseeing. But then, for whatever reason, the pair of them had felt rather quietly content after leaving the Globe, and they’d walked in relative silence along the South Bank, drinking in the air of culture around them.  
  
And so when they found themselves crossing the Thames and, eventually, in a corner of Hyde Park, it felt a little odd when Herc eventually spoke.  
  
“This is a little unnerving, isn’t it?”  
  
Carolyn looked up at him rather sharply.  
  
“What’s unnerving?”  
  
“Well. This. You’re not usually this quiet.”  
  
Without quite realising, they’d stopped walking. She stood facing him, frowning a little, examining his face in the hope that it would help her understand what he was trying to say.  
  
“Well. No. But usually we’ve just watched an opera, and usually you won’t be quiet about how much you adore the pretentious rot, and so usually I have to intervene and correct you.”  
  
Herc’s mouth twitched up into the sort of smile she supposed he thought was charming. (It was, a little, but of course she’d never tell him that.) 

“And so if I tell you that I liked the play…?”   
  
“Well, for once I’d have to agree with you.”  
  
“Oh. Well. Good.” There was a pause, in which the both of them just looked at each other for a moment. “So. Which characters did you like?”  
  
And then Carolyn noticed something about his face – she wasn’t sure if it was the eyes or the mouth or something in the raise of his eyebrows – which was … different. An attempt at looking sneaky, she suspected. And after having worked with Douglas Richardson for almost a decade, she was quite well acquainted with attempted sneakiness.  
  
“Hercules,” she began, which somehow increased the intensity of that strangely sneaky expression on his face. “Are you trying to compare us to certain of Shakespeare’s characters?”  
  
The sneaky look remained, though altered ever-so-slightly: there was an element of what could only be described (rather amusingly, she thought) as sheepishness.   
  
“Well. Now that you mention it. Yes.”   
  
And – well, she wasn’t entirely sure she had anything to say to that. Because of course she could see certain similarities between their own relationship and that of the ever-bickering Beatrice and Benedick (or at least, she hoped that was who he was thinking of: she never had liked the other two). And honestly, she’d been thinking rather the same thing since they’d left the theatre. She just hadn’t thought to express this thought for fear of giving him extra ammunition against her.  
  
All of a sudden this shared thought, this mutual recognition of themselves in Shakespeare’s characters, left her filled with affection. Keeping her eyes fixed on him, whilst fighting down that horrible soppy smile she could feel trying to manifest itself, yet another battle broke out in her head.

Because on the one hand, it would be so easy to just open her mouth and speak the words. And on the other, it would be horribly clichéd of her to tell him she was in love with him based on a shared appreciation of Shakespeare. And – well, he’d become comfortable with sharing his feelings for her now, and her continued silence on the matter had almost turned into a matter of pride. Telling him now, especially in this way, would be like letting him win.  
  
And yet it would be so, so simple: three words, one syllable each, hardly a difficult matter -  
  
“Oh, I think I’ve broken you,” he said, and the mood shifted back to teasing, and the moment was lost.


	5. Chapter 5

**five.**

It was Arthur who questioned it first. Carolyn had gone into the flight deck to tease the pilots, and he’d followed soon after with hot drinks and a slight frown.  
  
“Coffee, chaps!” he announced, handing out the drinks before turning to Carolyn. “Mum, why have you brought that sheep on the plane? I thought you went to get Herc a birthday present.”  
  
“I did. And the sheep is it.”  
  
Douglas turned around rather abruptly. “The sheep’s for  _Herc_? Given that we also brought back a goose, I’d thought that perhaps Martin was starting a farm.”  
  
“But I thought Herc didn’t like sheep,” Arthur said.  
  
“He despises them,” Carolyn confirmed cheerfully.  
  
“Right,” said Arthur slowly, looking over at Martin and Douglas seemingly in the hope that one of them would understand what was going on.   
  
“I think I’d rather you didn’t buy me a birthday present this year, Carolyn,” Martin chipped in, to Douglas’s fervent agreement.  
  
“No, but you’re usually brilliant at presents, Mum! You always get me something I like. Is it because you don’t know what Herc likes, because I could probably have helped you there –"   
  
“No, no, the sheep is perfect.”  
  
If Carolyn had thought that Arthur couldn’t possibly look any more confused, she was immediately proven wrong.  
  
“Yes, people tend to be so appreciative when their girlfriends buy them gifts that terrify them,” Douglas muttered. Carolyn fixed him with a glare, but declined to comment.  
  
“Why would you buy someone that you love a present that you know they’ll hate?”  
  
At that, Carolyn noticed Douglas’s facial expression becoming rather alarming. The look that meant he’d found teasing material was slowly coming onto his face, and suddenly Carolyn felt that she needed to escape this situation as quickly as possible.  
  
“Arthur, get me some tea. Douglas, get back to your job, or I’ll switch your salary with Martin’s.”  
  
And she left the flight deck to sit with Finn McCaul and irritably wonder what, exactly, her underlings were saying about her in her absence.  
  
Arthur soon popped back in with the tea.   
  
“Here you are,” he said, and then sat in silence for a record twenty seconds staring at the sheep, apparently contemplating her merits as a gift-giver.  
  
“But really, Mum, why have you bought Herc a present that he’ll hate?”  
  
And away from the pilots, with her son’s wide-eyed, innocent face staring at her, she found herself feeling rather less defensive about the matter. She just wasn’t sure how to explain.  
  
“Well,” she began. And stopped.   
  
“Because if you bought me a present I was scared of, I’d probably be a bit upset,” Arthur added.   
  
“Yes.” There was another pause.   
  
“Even if you said you loved me afterwards, I think I still wouldn’t like it. Are you going to tell him you love him afterwards?”  
  
Carolyn closed her eyes for a moment, in the hope that when she opened them, Arthur would somehow understand everything without her having to speak. Given that he looked as confused as ever, she did the only thing she could think of.  
  
“Go and see if the pilots need more coffee, why don’t you?”  
  


~*~

  
  
Herc’s birthday wasn’t for another three days after their return to Fitton, and in that time, she’d thought rather a lot about what Arthur had said. Perhaps the sheep  _was_  a little much. But after spending eighty-five euros on the bloody thing, there wasn’t much she could do about it now, except… well. Maybe she  _ought_  to tell him how she felt. She’d been thinking about it for such a long time anyway, and it would at least explain why she’d spent such a lot of money just to bother him.  
  
So, when she gave it to him, and he’d reacted with a truly beautiful yelp of fear that she thought justified the eighty-five euros in itself, she’d looked into his face, and breathed slowly, and –  
  
She couldn’t do it. The words wouldn’t come; her mouth wouldn’t co-operate; something would not let her speak those bloody words. Not for the first time, she wished she were a little more like her son: completely incapable of any sort of secrecy or dishonesty, and completely unembarrassed by his emotions. She’d spent too long being private and guarded to the point where she was incapable of speaking a three-syllable sentence.  
  
(From the look in his face, he’d understood the sheep gift for what it was, but it would still be nice, sometimes, to have the freedom to express herself in words.)


	6. Chapter 6

**\+ one.**

She was exhausted. They’d been flying that ridiculous film crew individually from Dublin to Seattle all week, leaving her to deal not only with seeing far too much of her pilots, but also with increasingly rude passengers. Even Arthur seemed to be less than entirely cheerful at the situation, though mostly, she suspected, out of concern that Snoopadoop would be getting lonely (Carolyn had asked the neighbours to pop in and feed her each morning, and their little girl was quite keen to walk her, but Arthur pointed out that she wasn’t usually left by herself for more than two nights, and it had been six so far).  
  
She’d headed into her somewhat shabby hotel room rather early, hoping that a good night’s sleep would leave her as cheery as Arthur on an off day.  
  
And then her room was too light. Her mattress was horribly uncomfortable. The duvet was lumpy and made her much too warm, but pushing it off made her too cold. The pillows were flat. And she kind of a little bit wished she wasn’t on her own, and that was the most infuriating part. Not because she suspected that having Herc with her would help her sleep, but at least she’d have someone to bother.   
  
If she was entirely honest with herself, she’d kind of wanted him around all week.   
  
Of course, she knew why she wanted him around. She knew why she missed him. And the worst part was, she wasn’t sure they’d ever gone this long without seeing one another.  
  
After ten more minutes of tossing and turning, this time thoughts of Herc keeping her awake, she reached out for her phone to call him.  
  
(Midnight. That meant it was eight o’clock in England, which meant he was probably still sleeping. Excellent.)  
  
“Hello Carolyn,” he answered, not at all sounding like he’d just woken up. “This is a rather late call, shouldn’t you be sleeping?”  
  
“I was wondering if you were free tomorrow evening.”  
  
“Gosh, that was to the point. Have you missed me?”  
  
Carolyn scowled, forgetting for a moment that he couldn’t actually see her. “Do be quiet, Herc, this is entirely your fault. You lost your right to speak when you went and made me fall in love with you without my consent.”  
  
It took a moment for the pair of them to comprehend what she’d just said, but then –  
  
“You’re in love with me?”  
  
She considered this: because there were two options ahead of her, as far as she could see. The safest option, the one she automatically leant towards, was denial. But she’d been doing that for over a year now, and it was tiring and ridiculous and _pointless_ now he’d just heard her admission.  
  
So she went with the truth.  
  
“Oh, honestly, you can’t be that surprised. I’m sure even  _Martin_  could have worked that out.”  
  
“No, no, it’s just nice to hear it,” he said, and though it wasn't not obvious, she could detect a note of smugness in his voice, and hated it. “I love you too, for the record,” (and that made her far happier than she’d ever admit to anybody). “What time do you get back? I think I can spare an evening for someone who loves me.”  


 

~*~

  
It was a quiet flight back, with everyone a little sleepy and looking forward to their time off (especially Martin, judging by that silly grin which hadn’t left his face since he'd met that awful princess). Arthur even chattered away at a slightly lower volume than usual, though his level of enthusiasm was unchanged.  
  
And by half-past eight in the evening, sun just beginning to set, the plane hit the ground.

And there was Herc, in the car park, waiting for her.  
  
She didn’t run up to hug him like some sort of smitten teenager, but it was a close thing. (As it happened, he  _did_  run up to hug her; something she allowed for about two seconds before swatting him away.)  
  
“I love you,” he murmured into her ear.  
  
“Yes, yes, so you keep saying.” She paused for a moment, wondering if she could bring herself to say it, and then: “I love you too.”  
  
She wasn’t quite sure if the soppiness of the smile that followed made her regret saying it or not, but then, on balance, decided that she'd rather deal with a slightly soppy Herc than no Herc at all.


End file.
